


Chapter One: Protect

by i_gaze_at_scully



Series: To Save a Child [1]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-07
Updated: 2018-10-07
Packaged: 2019-09-15 10:03:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16931214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/i_gaze_at_scully/pseuds/i_gaze_at_scully
Summary: Set during 'Emily'Kresge never stops Mulder in the hallway of the nursing home.





	Chapter One: Protect

On a plane to California, Mulder considers briefly if the ova he carries in his pocket should be allowed past airport security. He’s a federal agent, so no one really ever asks, but he wonders. He turns the cylinder over in his pocket, the smooth surface spinning, spinning under his fingertips. She has no idea. Tens of thousands of feet in the air and he knows he’s about to drop the biggest bomb on the person he cares most about in this world. He hopes it is the right decision.

SAN DIEGO COUNTY CHILDREN’S CENTER

Scully’s daughter is nothing and everything like he expected. She is blue eyes and strawberry blonde hair, she is reserved and susceptible to his humor. She is so much littler than he realized, so young. The way Scully smiles at him behind her is a bolt of lightning to his heart.

“I can protect her, too,” she insists, and he can tell from the set of her jaw and the fire–brighter than usual–in her eyes that she has already made up her mind. He has too; that’s why he’s here, to help her gain custody. But…

“Yeah, but who’s going to protect you? Emily’s adoptive parents are both dead, by no accident.” He would never deny her this if it is her choice, but she needs to know what she’s getting herself into. She needs to know the danger, the sacrifice.

He’s tried not to think of the sacrifice.

She’ll leave of course. Find somewhere remote and safe to raise her daughter, or at the very least leave the job that is a constant threat to her health and safety. She will return to medicine, get a two bedroom, find the best schools and create a life for her daughter far from the ghosts of both of their pasts. She will keep the darkness at arm’s length, and that certainly includes him. The biggest light sucking vacuum in her life. And to make her happy, he has to let her. It flays him open to know that darkness clings to her like sand to skin. But selfishly, so selfishly, he hopes she might realize that, try as she might, she can’t shake it. He hopes she will choose another path, one that includes him.

“I know… I’ve considered that, but I’ve also considered that there’s only one right thing to do,” she says summatively. And he knows she’s right. Newly resolved, he steels himself for what’s to come.

BILL SCULLY RESIDENCE

He sees the way Scully looks at Tara, and his heart… He’s been here all of a day and his heart’s already dropped and soared and sunk and nearly jolted right out of his chest. He can’t keep up.

Her small talk withers in a room pulsing with tension and questions, a burning curiosity.

“Why didn’t you tell me, Mulder?” She asks, as she deserves to.  _It wasn’t the right time_ , he had told himself originally.  _Too much at once would overwhelm you, you needed time. I had already caused you so much suffering. I had already almost lost you._

“I never expected this. I thought I was protecting you.” The truth, the most important reason, but not the only one, he knows. And now, now his mind races with the possibilities and all they don’t know. They speak only in questions, answer each other with as yet unconceived ideas. Genetic experiments, children, someone, something, somehow. And Scully. For whatever reason, Scully is inextricably linked to all of it, and so is he. They both race to the car when the voiceless call is traced to the children’s center.

SAN DIEGO COUNTY CHILDREN’S CENTER

Emily has spoken two words to him: “a potato.” She has sort of smiled at him exactly once. But when they burst in the room and Scully tenderly feels the girl’s forehead, he is compelled to hold her. He picks her up from the bed instinctually, cradles her on his shoulder, vividly imagines–for the most fleeting moment–bouncing her to sleep or bringing her from the couch to bed. He feels a rush of intense emotion, something so deep and primal he isn’t sure he’s ever experienced anything like it. He has to protect this child. He will protect this child.

PRANGEN PHARMACEUTICALS

So this is Dr. Calderon, the prick who has withheld treatment from Emily. The man is about as imposing as a wounded deer and obviously has the moral backbone of a jellyfish. Mulder twitches in his seat, powerless, knowing Calderon holds all the cards. He could mean life or death for Emily, and he’s giving Mulder the run around. With every syllable out of this bastard’s wide, smug mouth, with every minute movement of his sweaty hands, Mulder’s jaw clenches more and more. He bites the inside of his cheek so hard he tastes blood.

And then Calderon stands. Extends his hand, as amicably and with as much regret as if he’d had to deliver the unfortunate news of a mixup at the post office. Mulder snaps.

He hears himself screaming, watches himself throw this gutless, worthless, waste of space onto the floor and into a wall. He’s seeing red and spewing accusations and he means every last one. He bares his teeth because he is feral, he will do anything,  _anything_ , just give him a reason. He feeds off the terrified whimper Calderon slips when the muzzle of a gun’s pointed at his stupid wide, smug mouth. Rage swirls through his brain, his muscles, fuels him, spurs him on. “ _I want everything to help that little girl!_ ”

He walks out of the lab with nothing. “I’ll be back,” he’d promised, and he intends to make good. When Calderon peels out in his car, Mulder follows.

NURSING HOME

Like his conversation with Scully at Bill’s, every question is answered with a question in this impossible nursing home.  _Beauty sleep, what is that?_  Anna Fugazzi is an enigma, along with the other impossible women hooked up to IV drips. In the dead of night it’s deathly quiet, the rustling of the draped plastic thunderous in his ears. In a box, in a refrigerator, in a room draped with plastic and filled with elderly mothers, in an unassuming nursing home in San Diego, California, he finds his partner’s name written on a folded slip of paper. His mind doesn’t have time to process, because in that same box in that same room, in the same inconceivable way, he finds a fetus submerged in green fluid. And it kicks. Mulder sucks in his breath.

A million questions, a million mysteries, he could spend the rest of his life solving the x files discovered tonight in this very room. He has proof in his hands, proof of what he doesn’t know, but he could find out. He could bust down the walls, blow the door wide open on this whole operation. With this, he could uncover what he’s searched his whole life for, he’s sure of it.

But that isn’t why he’s here.

He opens another box and finds vials of green liquid, pockets them and dashes when he sees Calderon pull up. He sneaks out of the nursing home and hides in the bushes until Calderon is inside, then makes a break for it. He drives straight to the hospital and doesn’t look back.

HOSPITAL

Emily looks like Sleeping Beauty. Aurora waiting to be woken, waiting for a curse to be lifted. She looks so peaceful, and Mulder knows that something is wrong.

“She’s gone into a coma. I’m okay Mulder,” Scully says, and he searches her face for any sign of  _I’m fine Mulder_ , but finds none. “It’s what’s meant to be.” She is at peace. She has made her decision.

But so has he.

“But if you could treat her…” His head spins from where he stood hardly 24 hours ago, cautioning Scully against what he’s fighting for himself. He spins a vial in his pocket with the potential to give her more than the vial he came to California with.

“I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t do it to her.”

“Are you sure?” She has to be sure.

“Mulder, whoever brought this child into this world…” She hesitates. “Didn’t intend to love her.”

Mulder shakes his head, remembers the complete lack of emotion or remorse in Calderon’s voice as he condemned a child. Scully’s right about that. But she isn’t right about this.

He brings his hand to her arm, but she doesn’t turn to face him, her eyes trained on her daughter. He trails down to her wrist and threads his fingers through hers, squeezes once.

“But you would love her, Scully,” he says softly, gently, with the utmost care. “You do love her.”

She bites her lip and turns her head further from him.

“I think I’d like to be alone…” she protests, trailing off and bringing her other hand up to capture a tear before it falls. He lets go of her hand and reaches into his pocket. When he pulls out the vial, eerie green and iridescent, she catches his eye in wonderment.

“Are you sure?” He repeats.

“Mulder, where did you get that?” He pulls two more out of his pocket and she takes one gingerly into her hand.

“You said that Calderon came to the hospital and injected Emily with something, right?” She nods slowly, entranced by the vial. “I think this was it. We could…”

He tries to temper his excitement, his desperate, hungry excitement. He could have the boys pull some strings, get the vials to a chemist who could isolate or replicate or do whatever they do to make more of this life-sustaining substance. He could give Scully what she wants, make her happy.

He feels the air vibrate between them and she looks up, the fire he knows and loves back in her eyes.

“Mulder, I couldn’t do it alone. I can’t protect her by myself.”

He cups her face with both hands, thinks back not so long ago to another hospital, another time, another near loss, and kisses her forehead as he did then.

“You won’t be alone,” he promises. “I’m going to protect you, Scully. We’re going to protect your daughter.”


End file.
